Pouring the foundation

Last week, we started pouring the cement foundation of the activities center.  The foundation will support the exterior wall and the steel frame of the building.  The cement is a couple feet deep to provide a strong base for the structure.

If you look at it, you'll see massive threaded steel rods sticking up from the cement in groups of four.  This is where the steel structure will be bolted down to the cement.

You may also notice that the foundation seems very wide.  The outside wall won't extend far past the steel structure, so when it's complete, there will be nearly a foot of foundation extending around the entire outside wall of the activities center.  We did this on purpose so that later this foundation can support a brick exterior we hope to apply to the building in a future phase.  For the moment, the brick exterior was an unnecessary cost to completing the building.  Also, we hope to add some additional rooms (like weight rooms and coach's offices) to the building in a later phase, and there's no sense in paying for a brick exterior that we'll be covering up with additional construction later. 

When we first open the gym this spring, it will be a metal shell, but later as our full campus emerges, it will have a brick exterior for a classic look that is consistent with the other buildings.